The Myth of Humans' Poor Sense of Smell Debunked
Joanna Klein, NYT
By shoving her nose against a fire hydrant, your terrier may be able to decipher which pit bull in the neighborhood marked it before her. But that doesn't necessarily mean she's a superior sniffer.Still, it's conventional wisdom that humans' sense of smell is worse than that of other animals dogs, mice, moles and even sharks.This belief isn't based on empirical evidence, but on a 19th-century hypothesis about free will that has more in common with phrenology than with our modern understanding of how brains work.
By shoving her nose against a fire hydrant, your terrier may be able to decipher which pit bull in the neighborhood marked it before her. But that doesn't necessarily mean she's a superior sniffer.Still, it's conventional wisdom that humans' sense of smell is worse than that of other animals dogs, mice, moles and even sharks.This belief isn't based on empirical evidence, but on a 19th-century hypothesis about free will that has more in common with phrenology than with our modern understanding of how brains work.